Kansas State's Jerome Tang Addresses Adapting To Changing NIL Landscape

Over the years the coaching landscape of college basketball has changed.

One of the largest changes has been the addition of the transfer portal and NIL. In an interview on "Field of 68: After Dark," Kansas State men's basketball head coach Jerome Tang talked about the constantly changing world of NIL.

"I want to put this in perspective," Tang said. "What was a high NIL last year, is a low NIL this year."

Tang knew NIL would affect his team, but he did not know the impact that NIL would have on him as a coach.

"I would go into practice everyday and I was really, really frustrated that my 18 to 23 year olds were acting like 18 to 23 year olds when I was paying them, thinking like for some reason they would all of a sudden be 30 year olds," Tang said, "I was just frustrated so I wasn't the best version of myself and until I learned to deal with it our team didn't become what we were capable of becoming."

Later in the video Tang explained that his frustration didn't come from how he thought his players should be performing based on the pay they were receiving.

"The certain things I was expecting was you can't pout at practice, you gotta bring energy at practice," Tang said. "You have to show up early, and do your rehab... I have to train them how to do that, the money has nothing to do with it, they're still 18 to 23 year olds and my calling is to help them go from being boys to men, and I lost sight of my calling during that time and allowed frustration to build."

The 2024 transfer portal saw eight players leave their former schools and head to Kansas State. In the 2025 portal window the only transfer to commit to the Wildcats is former Memphis power forward Tyreek Smith. We will see how transfer portal and NIL shake out before the portal closes on April 22.

Seth Kunz is a contributor to Kansas State Wildcats On SI. He can be reached at sethkunz988@gmail.com

Follow our coverage on Facebook.

X: @KStateOnSI